St. Barth races

Competitors couldn’t have asked for more ideal sailing conditions — 15 to 20 knots, 5-foot seas — for the first of four Voiles de St. Barth races. More than most regattas, this year’s 70-boat Voiles is a yardstick for a group of some of the most outrageous new racing boats in a long while.

One of the big showdowns was between Jim Clark’s new $25 million, 100-foot Comanche and George David’s new Rambler 88. The talk on the dock was whether Rambler might be able to overcome Comanche’s 12-ft boat length advantage on a boat-for-boat basis because her smaller size makes her easier for mere mortals to handle and because she has hydraulic winches while Comanche relies on raw manpower. Mind you, Comanche’s mainsail weighs 600 pounds, and as San Diego crewman Joe Fanelli told us, "She’s a beast."

As it turned out, Comanche took line honors in the first race, which is what she was built for, by 10 minutes, while Rambler took corrected time honors by seven minutes. The admirals and enlisted men in each of the giant navies could this both be happy with the results.

The second most interesting division was the powerful and diverse multihull group, as Gunboat’s Peter Johnstone seemed to suggest that Timbalero III, the new foiling 40-ft G4, might have a chance to beat the three-times-longer monohull Comanche. After all, she had been foiling at 30 knots in tune-up sessions. How would she do against the new all-carbon Gunboat 55 Toccata, and Elvis, a ‘classic’ Gunboat 66? Or the Irens 63 Paradox? And where would Newport Beach’s Lloyd Thornburg fit in with his new-to-him MOD70 Phaedo3?

The answers weren’t long in coming, and they were decisive. Phaedo3 took off upwind at 18-20 knots, then reached off in the high 20s, leaving all competitors in the dust. She completed the 39-mile course 25 minutes faster than Comanche, more than half an hour in front of San Franciscan Peter Aschenbrenner’s Irens 63 Paradox, about 90 minutes in front of little Timbalero, and even farther ahead of Elvis. Toccata had some sail problems and retired.

The jury is still out on Timbalero, as when we saw her she couldn’t foil upwind. We’re not sure if it was too rough or what, but it will be interesting to see how she does in the last three races. (In today's second race, she periodically got up on her foils on a reach, but not for long.)

“After racing on my MOD70 Phaedo3, my Gunboat 66 seems really slow," Thornburg told Latitude. Mind you, his Gunboat did 428 miles in 24 hours in the last Transpac.

From Latitude 38